Which universities produce the most local leaders

Paul Martini’s cybersecurity company is growing at lightning speed. Since launching in 2004, iboss has grown more than 1,800 percent in revenue, and it is now hitting annual figures of $50 million. The work force will soon double.

The CEO and University of California San Diego alumnus almost moved the company to Austin, Texas, where taxes are much less than in California. He even had plans for a building drawn up. But Martini changed his mind.

“More important for us was being strategically positioned next to UC San Diego,” Martini told Triton, the university’s alumni magazine.

By staying, iboss continues to contribute to the local economy, and Martini is committed to hiring graduates from his alma mater.

Our City San Diego surveyed the top leaders — chief executive officers and presidents — of the largest San Diego-based companies to find out where they went to school.

Only 15.3 percent of 250 local leaders were educated at local universities. San Diego State University led with 18 alumni, or 7.3 percent, including Bradley Feldmann, the CEO and president of Cubic, a $1.3 billion defense company.

UC San Diego ranked fourth overall with 11 graduates, or 4.4 percent. Ten of those leaders earned bachelor’s degrees, with the 11th earning a graduate degree. University of San Diego had nine graduates, or 3.6 percent. The school, however, has roughly one-fourth as many alumni as SDSU.

This small peek into the education of leaders of the largest local companies can be telling of university impact, even though big business is not so big in San Diego. The county has only two Fortune 500 companies: Qualcomm and SDG&E owner Sempra Energy.

“We are a good place for start-ups and small businesses to get started,” said Kelly Cunningham, senior fellow and economist for the National University System Institute for Policy Research. “One of the natures of small business is that when they seem to reach a big enough size, they get bought out by other companies.”

Cunningham said the best indictors of a university’s economic impact are the number of jobs created and sales.

“Clearly there are a lot of companies here because of UCSD, including Qualcomm, which was started by Irwin Jacobs,” Cunningham said.

Jacobs, a graduate of Cornell University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a professor at UC San Diego when he started his company.

UC San Diego is also the second largest employer in the county, second only to the U.S. Navy. In 2014, it reported 29,986 employees, compared to only 6,939 employees at SDSU.

The benefits of successful local universities to the local economy are many, which is why the South Bay has long been fighting for a four-year university of its own. Last year, the city of Chula Vista and developers finalized an agreement for the land needed. Assemblywoman Shirley Weber has secured funding for studies to show the benefit of an additional university.

“Chula Vista is the only city in California with more than 200,000 people that doesn’t have a nonprofit or state university,” Chula Vista City Manager Gary Halbert told the San Diego Reader. “We think that establishing this kind of school creates all kinds of opportunity for our residents.”

One of the benefits is the students who move to San Diego for school and stay.

“A big part of that economic impact comes from students who might come here from other places and stay here,” Cunningham said. “So that is a big driving factor for companies in specific niches. It’s a big motivator for a company to be there so they can mine those students for their labor force.”

Cunningham said this is particularly true for technology companies — such as Qualcomm and iboss — because it can be a challenge to find qualified workers outside of innovative cities.

“It’s not that [Paul Martini] just developed this business, but he made a conscious decision to grow his business and work force here,” said Sandra Brown, vice chancellor for research at UCSD. “He could go anywhere in the world with this business, but San Diego really is the best place to develop it.”

According to LinkedIn, 36.3 percent of UCSD alumni live in San Diego.

“When you graduate, you tend to stay where you graduated from because companies are recruiting locally,” Cunningham said.

USD has 41.6 percent of its graduates living in the region. SDSU leads the way with 47.7 percent.

Jim Herrick, assistant vice president for alumni engagement at SDSU, said his university has a huge impact on San Diego.

“One in seven people in San Diego graduated from SDSU,” he said.

SDSU’s program Aztecs Hiring Aztecs, launched two years ago, has helped take this effect to the next level.

“We really stepped up our efforts at strengthening our ability to place Aztecs in corporations in San Diego,” Herrick said.

As for smaller schools, 27 percent of National University alumni, 41.2 percent of Point Loma Nazarene University graduates, and 62.8 percent of California State University San Marcos graduates with LinkedIn profiles live in San Diego.

But the bulk of leaders at San Diego’s largest companies are from outside the region. Harvard University educated 13 of the top San Diego executives, or 5.2 percent. Twelve of them earned graduate degrees mostly in business. University of Southern California tied Harvard for second place with 13 alumni, 12 of whom earned masters of business administration.

The out-of-region influence may have to do with two factors: San Diego is a notorious transplant city, with its appeal leaving vacationers wanting more. Second, San Diego business schools have yet to reach the caliber of national schools.

U.S. News & World Report ranks Harvard Business School, founded in 1908, as No. 2 and USC’s Marshall School of Business, founded in 1920, as No. 25. San Diego schools don’t even crack the top 50. UCSD’s Rady School of Management is doing well for a program in its infancy. Established only 14 years ago, it ranks No. 63. The business programs at SDSU and USD are not ranked.

“Rady School of Management is now in the upper echelon of business schools across the country because of the very aggressive approach we have taken,” Brown said.

But its graduates have yet to make an impact on the upper levels of the business community.